The paper first reviews historical, theoretical, and clinical perspectives on dreaming, from antiquity through Freud and Jung to contemporary frameworks, including Meneghetti's ontopsychological approach (OA). It then proposes an investigation of the OA to dream and its correlations with temperament, character and psychological distress.
In the present study, we first tested whether the OA dream content analysis system correlates with the Hall and Van de Castle (HVDC) system, which is the most accredited and applied coding method of dream content analysis. In the completed first phase of the project- an exploratory analysis of the correspondence between the principal dream content categories in the Ontopsychological Dream Handbook and those identified by the HVDC system - moderate to high correlations were observed between OA and HVDC dream codes in five comparable categories (Spearman correlation test). Characters/Persons or Individuals r=0.75 (p < 0.01); Activities/Action in Mutation r=0.74 (p < 0.05); Emotions/Sentiments r=0.82 (p < 0.01); Settings/Place r=0.53 (p <0.01); Objects/Objects r=0.82 (p <0.01). This suggests that the OA coding system has satisfying, although preliminary, convergent validity. Our findings suggest that a universal approach to dream analysis may be feasible across different theories of mind and psychotherapy. Such an approach could yield reliable descriptions of dreams of interest to both scientists, psychologists and psychotherapists (Giuliani & Palumbo, 2024).
The second phase of the OA on dreams study is ongoing. This second phase is looking at correlations between dreams and temperament, character, and psychological distress, using the Temperament Character Inventory (TCI) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) tools. At present, enrollment and data entry have been completed. We recruited 105 subjects. Preliminary data deriving from analysis of correlations between dream content according to the OA and temperament traits, character traits and distress will be discussed.